Virgil doesn’t retreat, but she sees him recoil. His body language is clear. He’s not sure. He might be afraid of her. Now that’s interesting. Jonesy, though, he doesn’t give a shit. He licks his lips, comes another step closer.

There it is again: the smell of gun smoke. Damn near makes her sick. It’s not real, she thinks. Not a smell, but the ghost of a smell.

“Last chance,” she says. Her heartbeat is drumming in her neck. Every part of her brain is screaming for her to take those getaway-sticks she calls legs and run as far and fast as she can. But her body stays rooted. Her hand tightens in her bag. It’s got other plans. “We can all just play nice. Go our separate ways. You can leave that nice Mexican boy alone—”

“Venezuelan,” he peeps up from inside the dumpster.

“Sorry. You can leave that nice Venezuelan boy alone, and he won’t tell anybody, and nobody will get hurt worse than he already has. Square?”

“I like her,” Jonesy says to Virgil. “She’s feisty. I bet the three of us could have a fun time together. Virgil at the front. Me at the back. Shaking hands in the middle.”

Her stomach roils. She goes elbow-deep in her bag.

“I see you reaching in that hippie purse,” Jonesy says, pulling Virgil along next to him. “What’s in there? I don’t think you can fit a shotgun in there.”

Way he says shotgun, he knows. It doesn’t scare him. And that scares her. You’re going to get hurt, she thinks. Maybe you do this to yourself.

You go poking rattlesnakes, maybe you get bit.

But she bears down. Doesn’t move.

“Nope, no shotgun,” she says. “Hey, you ever been attacked by a bear?”

Jonesy pauses. “What?”

“A bear. Like, a grizzly. As I hear it, you get attacked by a bear, not much you can do. They run faster. They got teeth and claws like knives. You play dead, that might work, but not before the bear bats your body around like a cat with a dead mouse. You’d think a gun would do the trick, but that ain’t necessarily true, either. A bear will take a round to the head and keep coming. And a scattergun mostly just pisses them off. What you need is a can of bear mace.”

“Bear what?”

“Bear mace.” She shows him. From her purse she pulls a tall, lean canister with a pull tab and a black nozzle. Atlanta points the pull tab at the three assholes and rips that tab off.